FARMINGTON – Murmurs of wonder mixed with surprise and shrieks of delight have become frequent sounds inside Cascade Brook Elementary school in the past days, bouncing off the many-colored walls and high ceilings, echoing down the halls.
For artist Luanne Wrenn, perhaps, the school lobby’s lightning-quick transformation is an everyday occurrence, but for most everybody else, the emergence of Titcomb Mountain and the Little Red Schoolhouse on the cream-colored lobby walls is nothing short of miraculous.
“It’s different – it’s way different than any mural I’ve ever seen – the colors, the shapes, they’re … it’s good,” fourth-grader Jedadiah Fickling said, stopping on his way back to class to take a long look at the nearly-finished depiction of skiers and snowboarders at Titcomb.
Though they’re not helping with the painting itself, the Cascade Brook students all had a hand in the mural’s creation, talking with their teachers and Wrenn, and making lists of the places in Farmington they felt were the most integral to their sense of community.
“I came in and talked with the kids about what’s important to them – the three most significant places in town, and why,” Wrenn said. They came up with five spots, and each location will be painted onto a lobby wall this spring. Wrenn has finished the first, of the Little Red Schoolhouse, and is nearly done with the image of Titcomb Mountain. Still to come are depictions of the landscape around the Sandy River, Hippach Field and downtown Farmington.
Wrenn does her painting freehand, unlike many muralists who project smaller drawings and even photographs onto walls. She paints with interior house paint and acrylics, using brushes for most of the work and mismatched socks to create some effects. Done in muted tones, there are no primary colors in any of the finished images, making them look far different from the murals painted with children’s poster paint in some schools.
After spending much of a nearly $8,000 MBNA grant aimed at helping the school realize its goal of promoting “Respect: For ourselves, for each other, (and) for our community,” by sending students to Camp Susan Curtis in Stoneham for a team-building course, Cascade Brook Principal Dr. Nichole Goodspeed and others decided to use the small amount of leftover money for a mural to foster the students’ respect for their community.
A “very generous” donation from Franklin Savings Bank supplied the bulk of the money needed to fund the project.
“On the last day of school, each school has to choose a goal for the next year,” Goodspeed said Thursday. Last year, she said, teachers and administrators took note of a general lack of respect – for themselves, their classmates, and their teachers – shown by many Cascade Brook students.
The respect project has had good results so far, according to Goodspeed, who said that while there are still incidents, the level of disrespect in the school have decreased this year.
School counselor Martina Arnold feels the project has been overwhelmingly positive so far. “It’s really important to bring this kind of information (about respect) to the kids on a daily basis. It’s really been an eye-opener for me,” she said.
It has also increased the students’ respect for Wrenn and artists like her. “Having her here, the kids are seeing her” process from start to finish, “when she’s just penciling it in to when she’s got all the colors up,” Goodspeed said. She says she hears a lot of “wow, she’s really good, wow,” coming from the lobby.
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